Enossal implants, also known as endosteal or endosseous implants, are being applied to an increasing extent in order to establish a long-lasting partial or full prosthesis in the jaw of the patient. In this way, a fully functional tooth replacement is provided, which enables the patient to chew food without difficulty, thus fulfilling a very important health function. Thorough chewing, particularly of raw foods and relatively tough foods such as whole-grain bread, is an important preliminary stage in the digestive process. It must be considered that a poorly seated partial or full prosthesis is accompanied by the risk that, due to chewing difficulties, the patient will not consume sufficient quantities of physiologically important foods such as fresh salads, fruit, and vegetables.
In known implants, the tooth replacement is bolted with a fastening head, in which a screw, starting from the chewing surface of the tooth or denture, is screwed into a prepared threaded bore of the fastening head.
It has been demonstrated that a simple screw connection of this type is not adequate in many cases to secure the tooth replacement to the fastening head, since the screws have the tendency to loosen due to the alternating loads of chewing motions, so that the patient has to seek out his dentist to have the tooth replacement newly fastened. Particularly disturbing is when the loosening screw connection involves a single tooth since the tooth can twist, leading to damage to the tooth and/or to its opposite situated tooth.